Press Kit
Short Bio
Samantha Burgess-Smith is a writer of feminist fantasy fiction. Her works expand genre stereotypes to illuminate the world-shaping power of mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, and matriarchs.
Samantha lives the best of lives in Nashville with her husband and two daughters. She enjoys writing more than almost anything else. Also high on her list are hiking, cycling, travelling, sleeping, reading, thrift shopping, and watching professional cycling.
Long Bio
Samantha Burgess-Smith has been writing stories since the 4th grade. Her first short story was a Sleeping Beauty retelling in which the princess and the dragon live happily ever after.
Award-winning in her field, Burgess-Smith has been on the founding teams of 3 start-up businesses, including an international non-profit. Following the death of her father and the birth of her two daughters, she evolved her entrepreneurship career into a return to her first love, writing.
Graduating with a degree in Literature with a specialization in Feminist Film Theory, Burgess-Smith has a deep fascination with elements of literary theory such as structure/form as content, the narrative gaze, and the reimagination of common tropes through the feminine lens. Experimentation with these elements comprises much of her work, as well as her meticulously high self-imposed standards for damn good dialogue.
Snake Wife, with its intense and intimate exploration of the maternal in fantasy fiction, is her debut novel.
Snake Wife - Short Summary
Burgess-Smith’s debut novel is an intense and intimate exploration of motherhood nestled in a lush feminist fantasy.
When Liama, who can stop a man’s heart with a single thought, finds herself captive to a powerless man, she must shatter an ancient legacy to protect her daughter from inheriting the same fate.
In this mythic fantasy of reclaimed power and fierce maternal love, one woman's fight for freedom will determine whether the power-bearing women who come after her live as weapons or warriors.
Snake Wife - Long Summary
A novel of magic, memory, and maternal fury.
For centuries, the Waster Women of House Est have wielded power that could build thrones or bring them to ruin. Liama was one of them, blessed by an ancient goddess with dominion over flesh and blood and destined to pass that power on to her daughter. Then, ten years ago, that destiny was shattered by meeting the eye of a stranger. Robbed of her memories and her freedom, Liama wakes each dawn as the wife of the Chieftain, a powerless man who wields her violent abilities in order to hold his usurped throne.
When a single touch begins to fracture the power binding her memories, Liama faces an agonizing choice: remain in the gilded cage of her false marriage, where a tenuous agreement keeps her daughter safe, or risk it all on a forgotten alliance that could put a crown on Liama’s head, and a dagger in her daughter’s heart.
In a land where women bear the weight of both salvation and destruction, Liama will rupture ancient bonds and tear the veil between worlds to protect her daughter. But to save the girl from inheriting a legacy of stolen memory and forced submission, Liama will have to shatter the very bones of everything the Wasters have built, remaking their legacy from spilled blood.
Recognitions
Recipient of the Kirkus Star for excellence in writing.
“An exquisitely written and gut-wrenching masterpiece of a fantasy novel.” -Kirkus Reviews
FAQs and Suggested Interview Topics
Background
Burgess-Smith graduated from Samford University with a BS in English with a specialization in feminist film theory.
She spent 12 years designing and creating programs and products for non-profit and for-profit companies. Her portfolio includes rapid replication models for expanding art therapy in war-torn Congo, sustainable agriculture programs for building generational wealth in Honduras, and the New Orchard Business Identity and Change Capacity cultural assessments (for which she was a finalist for the Nashville Technology Council’s Innovator of the Year in 2022).
Burgess-Smith has been on the founding teams of 3 businesses, including an international non-profit. Her skills and diverse experiences make her an uniquely-built creative, with training in both creative writing and value proposition design, as well as branding, product strategy, sales, and a whole lot of public speaking.
Snake Wife - Reason for Writing
Following the death of her father and the birth of her two daughters, Burgess-Smith evolved her entrepreneurship career into a fully-focused effort on creative writing.
Snake Wife was never intended to be her debut novel. The story was a “side quest” exploratory project with the purpose of fleshing out a specific character (the character of Kurat), who was originally intended to be a villain in a later narrative arc.
It is no secret that Snake Wife is significantly influenced by the author’s frustration with a lack of well-developed and meaningful mother characters in the high fantasy genre, which is still dominated by male writers. She wanted to attempt to write a mother protagonist that anyone could understand and invest in.
The first draft was completed in only 3 months. Burgess-Smith attributes this to having a lot of pent up words and ideas after 12 years playing “Business Barbie”.
Other Interesting Topics
The role of death in creative development
The Fantasy genre - history and ongoing evolution
How writing changes the way you read
Momming and writing
Self-Publishing, why I chose it
Writing Background
To Burgess-Smith, writing - both fiction and non-fiction - is a method of making meaning out of the complexities in life, as well as ordering her own thoughts. She has consistently kept a diary since she was 11.
Burgess-Smith completed her first story in the 4th grade, a Sleeping Beauty retelling in which the princess and the dragon live happily ever after (and the prince gets bent).
She has continued writing through all stages of life, gathering a robust ‘juvenalia’ of both finished and unfinished projects. Many of these early works were done on a hand-me-down 1995 Compaq laptop that was 3 inches thick.
In addition to maintaining creative writing projects on the side, Burgess-Smith has used her writing and communication skills extensively in her other professional endeavors, often telling business owners to hire Literary Theory majors if they want to get things done right. She attributes any professional success to these skills more than any other.
Snake Wife - Themes
Snake Wife was written to straddle the genres of fantasy and literary fiction as an experiment in combining the best of both.
Snake Wife is unapologetically a female-centric project, in which the author has chosen to prioritize female relationships, perspectives, values and experiences.
The exploration of common fantasy tropes (romance, parent/child obligations, oppression/exploitation of power, physical combat as a means of establishing merit, hidden identity reveal plot twists, etc.) through the feminine lense was of particular importance to the author. In other words, she wanted to explore ways these tropes might differ if experienced by a strong female character, rather than a male one.
The narrative pace is intentionally broken at frequent points to allow the reader to experience “mom moments” between the protagonist Liama and her daughter, Maarja. The purpose of this is to immerse the reader, regardless of identity or background, in the visceral and body-inhabiting experience of motherhood, in order to deepen the historically flat “she did it for her kid” motivation that is often used by fantasy writers to conveniently silence or kill moms.
Other themes - feminine forms of legacy, palencest, maternal self-sacrifice, religious identity, romance as means to an end, memory and identity, powerlessness leading to self-destruction.